How do you currently position yourself in design, and how would you describe your professional trajectory?
Right now, I see myself as an independent digital and motion designer. I have an engineering background — I studied at Moscow Aviation Institute, — and I didn’t learn design in any specialised institution like School of Design at Higher School of Economics, but rather through additional courses and intensives. I started as an animator, then switched to product design, and after that, I worked at two advertising agencies — progressing from senior designer to art director.
The start of the war really did hit me hard. At a certain point, I realised that I couldn’t lead a team anymore. I resigned from the studio and switched to freelancing, including working with ESH, which I’m very happy about—the team here is very energising, and I’m pleased to feel like a part of this community.
What does the transition from being a corporate employee to a freelancer mean to you? How has your perception changed?
First of all, I wanted to start choosing the projects I work on, to have the freedom to easily turn down projects.
Secondly, freelancing comes with less responsibility. It’s easier for me now to be under someone else’s guidance on a project. I was planning to change the field anyway. I wanted to leave the advertising agency and focus more on studio work in web-design.
Could you say moving to freelancing is a decision of a mature person?
I think so, yes. I wouldn’t recommend starting with freelancing to young professionals though. It’s better to first start at a studio, learn from senior designers and art directors, and simply gain the experience.
Thus you become more organised in self-learning. Later on, in remote project work, you’re able to deliver the sufficient quality while continuing to develop yourself constantly.
I moved to full-time freelancing after a long time working at a studio in 2022. It was a bit scary at first considering that you don’t even know if projects will be needed at all in these times.
Was your fear related to your work becoming unnecessary if you went solo?
I was more worried that the design market, in general, would collapse. Maybe it’s too self-confident, but I thought that nobody’s work would be needed at all. I imagined I’d end up working as a cook in some café because I love cooking.
There was no fear that I wouldn’t have projects—I knew I had built many professional connections throughout my career, and that some people would want to work with me.
How do you deal with self-reflection?
This is a never-ending process, not just during each project but every day.
I think this is a distinguishing feature not only of designers but of all people who are forced to come up with something creative.
When clients say, ‘Thanks for the presentation,’ it means nothing — you’re waiting for the follow-up with a ‘but.’ You only relax when you hear, ‘We generally liked it, but we’ll take a closer look.’
And when you hear simply, ‘We’ll take a look,’ you think, ‘Oh, what have I done?’
Boris's Favourite Music Albums
Does your self-reflection increase over time, or do you realise when there’s no reason to worry and where you should be concerned?
I guess, at one of the early stages, somewhere between a junior and a middle, you gain confidence. After a period of doubt, a moment comes when you think, ‘Everything I do is good.’ But then doubts return.
When I was an art director, I always doubted everything internally, but I tried not to show it. It’s very helpful for an art director to let it go, to give more freedom to employees. At the very beginning as an art director, I literally redid everything after everyone, and that’s not very cool. First, it’s just impossible time-wise. Secondly, there’s no guarantee you’ll do it better.
Deadlines help a lot here. When there aren’t any, you can redo everything to the point of madness, and, again, there’s no guarantee you’ll be better at it.
But overall, self-reflection is good for development when you redo something three times and think to yourself, ‘Yes, this version is definitely better, I wasn’t doubting for nothing.’
Self-reflection forces you to learn and pushes you. But you shouldn’t beat yourself down.
What helps you to maintain that balance when self-reflection remains productive? Like validation from colleagues, clients, competition?
I’d say validation from colleagues more than from clients, because clients can be different — they might like something in poor taste, for example. Positive feedback doesn’t mean you did everything right. Maybe you could have done better, but the client already likes it.
I find it helpful to look up to other designers and art directors. I’m not afraid of being worse than others, than myself at an earlier stage. After all, everyone has different skills, backgrounds and traits. I’ve learned to only compete with myself.
Does that mean you’ve ascended to the point when, for example, negative criticism from others doesn’t affect you?
It motivates me to do even better. In the design process, various factors come into play. You might not have given enough time to some aspect or initially went in the wrong direction.
You could do everything correctly, but the was within a hypothesis that doesn’t fit the solution at all. In this case, criticism from other designers helps you grow further. I try to take it positively.
And regarding criticism from the client, it really depends on the client. Sometimes you realise that you agree and can rework stuff, other times you don’t. In such cases, freelancing and the realisation that I don’t have to continue a project really help.
Have you ever had occasions when harsh criticism made you feel completely lost?
Yes, it happened regularly in advertising agencies. This market in Russia is structured very strangely, since the clients are mainly marketing directors who pay from the company's budget.
They are afraid that they will get punished by higher-ups for making the wrong decision. So they are overcautious and often throw not quite adequate criticism at you, expressing it harshly. They often do not follow the sandwich principle: ‘Everything is fine, just correct it a little, but in general you do great!’ I was worried about this at all stages, right up to quit the agency. What infuriated me the most was the realisation that the result after their comments would be worse, when you know that your arguments won’t be heard. Because many marketing directors work by the principle of ‘You do what I say.’
How did you handle communication with the team and discuss criticism?
I didn’t pass the client’s criticism directly to the team. When the feedback was particularly foolish and clearly damaged the results, I would soften it by saying that I had run out of arguments and that we had no choice but to implement it.
This didn’t affect relationships with the design team negatively, but it did contribute to a greater isolation of the design department from the managers.
In an advertising agency, producers are slightly more on your side until the implementation stage. Then they tend to side with the developers and defend them more.
During client communication, the account manager is always on the client’s side. The more unreasonable the client is, the more it pours out on the account management.
As a result, you grow apart from each other, even though you share the same goal of doing the project well.
For some reason, at a studio managers tend to protect the agency’s point of view while also conveying the client’s thoughts without fully taking their side. Perhaps, it’s a matter of scale, the amount of people and projects. In an advertising agency, you’re more like service personnel. Various managers approach you, each pulling for their own client, and you don’t have time to form any sense of community.
How are your relationships with colleagues now? Do you see them as potential competitors or as helpers along your development?
Definitely the latter. But sometimes one can be a part of the other.
You don’t fear competition. Instead, you realise that someone might be better than you at something. And then you also want to learn that, which pushes you forward.
I believe that healthy competition is crucial in the design community, as long as it doesn’t turn into envy. Absorbing new ideas or innovations from colleagues is a huge plus of working in a team. Now, as a freelancer, I try to work specifically with studios to learn from other people.
Since we’re delving into darker matters — what causes you pain or disappointment in your work as a designer?
When something doesn’t work out. Either due to a lack of skills or due to certain circumstances. It’s frustrating when you enjoy the project, but external circumstances do not leave you enough time, so you can’t conduct sufficient research or dedicate enough resources. And the deadline is fixed.
Or when a project falls through for some reason. Not because someone is at fault, but simply because there’s no development budget, and the project doesn’t come to life.
It’s especially disappointing when you feel like everything was going well, but for reasons beyond your control the project won’t move forward. Especially, when it hasn’t reached the stage where you could at least add it to your portfolio.
What aspects of professional communication upset or frustrate you?
I’m an introvert by nature, and I don’t particularly enjoy interacting with people. I used to do it a lot for work, but now less so, thank God. If I have to call or meet someone new, to say something, it’s an instant pain.
So would you rather delegate this task to a project manager or producer?
It’s always a dilemma. You realise you can’t do it, but laziness constantly whispers, ‘Maybe you don’t have to?’
Both in the agency and now, it happens when a manager suggests setting up a call with the client and relaying the feedback to you. Your first thought is to agree. And then you understand that you need to attend it, explain, defend something, and hear the feedback firsthand.
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Why is that? Do you only trust yourself in this matter?
No, I trust the managers and art directors I work with. Otherwise, I wouldn’t collaborate with them. I don’t trust myself to interpret the written or retold text correctly. Communication works best when you engage in dialogue together. So that everyone hears their own part, and you can immediately discuss and clarify specific points.
I want to ask you about mistakes and missteps. How do you deal with them internally?
I consider each case separately. Sometimes, the realisation of a mistake comes during a presentation, at least that’s how it’s been for me. When you present a solution, and the client says it doesn’t fit at all. And you’ve built the whole presentation around that example.
Have you ever halted a presentation, knowing that you and the client were just going to waste time?
Unfortunately, I haven’t, but I love the story about Balenciaga’s creative director and Mirko Borsche who presented a new concept for their website. There were two concepts, and the creative director stopped him after the first one and said, ‘Yes, great, we’ll take this.’ Mirko said, ‘Wait, this is only half, we still have the second concept.’ So the creative director replied, ‘No, we’re taking this. I don’t even want to see what’s in the second one. And even if everyone in the room wants to see the second one, I won’t allow it.’
Are there things you regret in your professional life?
I realise the importance of higher education. Maybe not the kind I received, but it still sets your mind and forces you to think systematically.
Again, when you interpret clients’ words into some structure, a scheme, it allows you to design a site further.
But if I could wind the time back, I would definitely have gone to some art school so I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time later filling in the gaps, specifically from an artistic perspective.
Do you feel judged by people who have design education?
No, I don’t feel that kind of judgment from others. But I constantly feel incomplete. As if I came out of the woods from the wrong side when everyone had already covered half the route, and I was just starting.
At the same time, I’m moving slower, stopping, picking things up, learning. I realise that I’ve spent my time inefficiently. The level I’ve reached could have been achieved earlier if I had originally built my trajectory differently. But things turned out the way they did.
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This interview is part of the documentary project Insights about the people of the ESH design studio. The interview was conducted by Polina Drozhkova.
More information about the project can be found on the website insights.eshgruppa.com.
